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A mere three days before his handover to President Trump, former US President Obama signed off on a final round of sentence commutations and pardons. During his eight-year administration, Obama delivered 1385 commutations and pardons – a record his staff described as evidence of ‘remarkable mercy’. The highest profile of these final commutations was that […]

At the University of Newcastle we have conducted studies of the impact of the plain cigarette packs on smokers’ ratings of appeal and perceptions of the product. We have found that plain packs are rated by long-term smokers as less appealing and attractive. The participants of our research also said that they had noticed deterioration in the quality of tobacco. They also reported that they now struggled to tell the difference between the tastes of different cigarette brands now that packs all looked the same.

Professional communicators strive to get people to think in particular ways. Whether it’s a health agency promoting immunisation or a local company flogging surfboards, the underlying techniques are quite similar.

The techniques aim to engage audiences and get them to build in their minds the meanings intended for them. Those working in the business would rarely, if ever, stop to consider the impacts of their work from a feminist view.

Sport, whether football or any other, does not give a player the right to deliberately assault or inflict harm on somebody else. So why is it that the same incident occurring on a football field is unlikely to lead to criminal charges?

Unemployment and under-employment is impeding young people’s efforts to earn, establish savings, develop professional experience and secure jobs with long-term prospects – all of which were fairly normal situations for previous generations.
But changing employment patterns and slow economic growth leave young people susceptible to the risk of becoming entangled in long-term unemployment or under-employment, or being unable to find stable work that is either only seasonal or part-time.

There are various laws aimed at indecency, offensive behaviour, filming for sexual gratification, defamation and commercial use. Yet, for the most part, taking a picture of someone without consent in a public place is more of an ethical and moral issue than a legal one.

No Treasurer can please all the people all the time in a tough economic climate, but each federal budget manages to have a funding centrepiece that shines like a beacon among the inevitable winners and losers.

Do you donate your time to a non-profit organisation? Or money to charity? By world standards, Australians are a generous mob when it comes to donating money to charities, and time and effort to non-profits.

The future of Newcastle connected and creative | A MAJOR challenge for Newcastle and the city redevelopment is that we fall significantly below the state norms for the number of creative entrepreneurs and professional services workers as a proportion of the total workforce.

Mental illness is ranked third in Australia’s burden of illness after cancer and cardiovascular disease, so it is no surprise it is a major issue for workplaces and industries. It leads to absenteeism, presenteeism, injuries and lower productivity. Not to mention the effects on the person, their family and the wider community.

In recent days reports have emerged about organised sexual abuse of teenagers in residential care in Victoria. We have also witnessed the devastating stories of adult survivors of child sexual and other abuse by the authorities into whose care they were entrusted when they were vulnerable children.

Opinion article* published in The Age written by Dr Jeff McGee and Ann Apps at the University of Newcastle. Recent announcements by Holden and Toyota of manufacturing plant shutdowns in Geelong and Adelaide are stark reminders of how little control regional communities have over their economic and social futures in a globalised world. Corporate managers […]

Opinion article* published in Australasian Science written by Professor Clare Collins at the University of Newcastle. New diet fads and furphies seem to appear every day. While some of these have a scientific basis, for others the science has changed in response to new discoveries or the science is just not there yet. “I took […]

China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has just released some remarkable data on the addition of new electric generating capacity in 2013. China’s electric power system has been growing at a tremendous rate to keep up with the country’s breakneck expansion of its manufacturing industry over the past decade.